EEB 489: Conservation and the Endangered Species Act (Spring 2008)

This semester we will examine the status of conservation in the United States, through a detailed examination of the role that the Endangered Species Act has played. We will read a pair of books that resulted from "The Endangered Species Act at Thirty project". Volume 1 (Goble et al. 2006) focuses more on political issues relating to the Act; volume 2 (Scott et al. 2006) focuses more on the biology. But the two topics are inextricably linked and collectively the two volumes provide a comprehensive overview of the state of conservation in the country, with chapters by many of the leading players involved with putting conservation into action.

To learn more about the project that these books arose from, you can check out this YouTube link.

Schedule

Note that the chapters are not long and the pages are not large, so the readings are not as onerous as they might look. We're going to switch back and forth between the two volumes in order to keep thematically related chapters together, so make sure you are reading the correct chapters from the correct volume each week.

Discussion/News

If you have any information related to the course (e.g., relevant news items, related web links, etc.), feel free to post it here. Please put the date first, then your name, following the format shown below; be concise; and organize the list so that items are in reverse chronological order. If you're not an EEB graduate student, then you can email items to me and I will add them, but please send them to me in the right format.

4/23 Posted by Nicola: Here are some links to "ESA-like" laws around the world: [1][2][3][4][5]

1/20 Posted by Chris: This week's New York Times magazine has an article that mentions one of the concerns about the effectiveness of the ESA: the move by certain landowners to ensure that their land does not become suitable for rare species so that they do not become subject to the Act's provisions. The NYT article is here. Abstracts for the original research articles that are mentioned are here and here. This issue will come up later in the course.

1/8 Posted by Chris: For additional information on the ESA check out the links under "Course History" (below). You'll find the syllabus and readings from the version of this course that we did in 2004 (before the Goble and Scott books were published). Many of these papers are worth reading, especially if you are planning a career in conservation.